Oracle's Moon

18

When Khalil disappeared, Grace wobbled her way to the upstairs bathroom. She felt like a drunken sailor.

Gods, what he had done to her.

Every private place on her body felt hypersensitive, and her inner thigh muscles quivered. She touched a dusky area on the side of her breast. It was a suck bruise. She thought of him working her everywhere, and intense arousal pulsed through her. It was followed immediately by a forceful wave of emotion. She covered her eyes.

I did not know I needed grace until I met you, he had said.

I’m turning into some weird hybrid creature, she thought, like that crazy homicidal chick from Species. And Khalil Bane of My Existence told me that he needed me. Today’s forecast calls for free steaks and flying pigs.

Probably all it means is that Djinn males can get caught up in the moment just like human males do. I shouldn’t make too much of it. But I did learn that he likes sex. He likes it a whole lot. We haven’t enjoyed it in a leisurely fashion yet, but he did devote all of his attention to it.

And I already crave it and him.

She tried to lasso the part of her brain that had decided gibbering was a good thing to do before coffee on a Sunday morning. She didn’t have much luck, as she slid into the bathtub, washed her hair and soaped herself all over.

Everything was so sensitive, her body well used and pleasured hard. Even in the middle of their frenzy, he had been so careful with her knee. It hadn’t been strained in the slightest. She still thought she’d better wear the brace for a while, until the rest of her got used to standing upright again.

All of her casual summer clothes were now downstairs. She wrapped herself in a towel and went down to the office and dressed in a tank top and another pair of soft, unstructured shorts. Then she turned on the air-conditioning unit that was fixed into one of the living room windows, and she walked through the house, closing all the open windows. One larger unit was downstairs, and two smaller units were upstairs. With all three running the big, old house should be comfortably cool for the first time that summer. Yee-haw.

As she turned away from closing the window over the kitchen sink, she felt the Djinn enter the kitchen.

Her hackles raised as Phaedra formed in the middle of the room.

Oh damn.

Even though Khalil insisted she call him, every reason she had for not calling him the first time Phaedra showed up was still valid. But she had promised.

He didn’t actually say when she should call him. That was splitting hairs, and frankly, it would be a toss-up whether his Djinn sensibilities could accept that reasoning or if he was going to be royally pissed.

Who was she kidding, he was going to be royally pissed.

But she was still going to protect him, and he would just have to forgive her. She readied the expulsion spell as she said, “Hello, Freaky Bitch.”

Phaedra stared at her, black eyes burning. “Who is it? Who is the ghost?”

Grace studied her, mouth level. “Okay,” she said. “But just so you know—if you ever come uninvited into my house again, or if you come anywhere near my kids without my permission, I pinky swear I will knock the living shit out of you.” Damn, it felt good to have an offensive spell, or at least one that worked on Freaky Bitch.

Phaedra looked as if she hated Grace. “Just show me who it is.”

Grace touched the Power lightly and it flooded her. It really was like drowning, she thought, as the dark sea filled her to the brim and overflowed. She no longer tried to hold herself back from it, because that would be like trying to hold back from herself.

Come on, she whispered into the sea. Show yourself again.

The ghost heard and arrowed toward her. Grace held out a hand, and the ghost took it, eyes shining like the brightest of stars. Somehow she lifted the ghost out of the sea or pulled it into the present, for she was a doorway. She thought she would act as a channel, but instead, with a grateful look, the ghost stepped through her and into the kitchen.

Then Phaedra from a far distant past came face-to-face with the Phaedra she had become. The present Phaedra stared, her expression stricken.

The ghost of who she had been stared back wonderingly. Their forms were identical. They both had regal ivory features and bloodred hair, but they were far different from each other. The Phaedra from the past was transparent, but even so she had a brightness of spirit, a light in her face. She felt straight and strong and beautiful, and Grace knew this was who Phaedra had been before Lethe had imprisoned her, before she had become the dark.

In contrast, the present Phaedra’s razored edges and black center felt especially wrong. There was nothing wrong with the dark, Grace thought, as she considered the living sea inside of her. Darkness can be a beautiful thing, and the night had a velvet embrace that the day could never hope to match. But darkness was an entirely different thing from this brokenness.

The present Phaedra’s face contorted. She screamed, and the sound was so full of rage and pain, so full of shattered glass and catastrophic ruination, that it almost doubled Grace over.

She was horrified at what she had initiated. I’m so sorry, she wanted to say. But before she could find her way to the words, the ghost sprang, faster than thought, and wrapped around the present Phaedra.

Who screamed and screamed, beyond anything a human could produce. The strength of anguish behind it finally had Grace clapping her hands over her ears as tears streamed down her face. How could anybody survive with something like that inside of her? It was intolerable. No creature should reach a place of such pain that caused a scream like that.

Underneath the screaming, Grace began to hear something else.

Choose me. Choose me. All but inaudible, heard only in the mind, the ghost said it over and over, Choose me.

The screaming stopped. What it left behind was a pounding silence.

The ghost sank into Phaedra, whose body shuddered and rippled. Grace felt Phaedra flex convulsively. Then with a concussion that rattled the house, her presence snapped into a different alignment.

Oh, please let that be a good thing.

Grace wiped her eyes. When she could see again, Phaedra’s form was barely visible. The Djinn’s presence felt fragile and fundamentally changed. Grace said, “Tell me what I can do to help you.”

I must rest. Then Phaedra said slowly, Call on me when you have need, and I will come. I owe you a favor.

Grace felt something settle into place as the Djinn’s presence faded. It was a tiny, barely perceptible thing.

A thread of connection.

She turned, braced her elbows on the counter and leaned there for a while until her racing heart slowed. She couldn’t wait to tell Khalil what happened. Either that, or she dreaded it. Maybe both.

Phaedra had felt so paper-thin and delicate before she disappeared, hardly capable of surviving.

But there was a connection.

Grace wanted to pack it in cotton and wrap it in a bow. She could stare at it all day, hovering and fretting, except she had things to do.

The Oracle’s moon was a nexus, as the veil between times and worlds thinned and possibilities converged. It could be unpredictable and dramatic as hell.

So that was done and over with, right? Because she was calling a moratorium on unpredictable drama for at least a couple of weeks. Well, as long as she was calling a moratorium, she might as well make it a decade. She would insist on no more unpredictable drama until both the kids hit eighteen, but Chloe was going to reach puberty well before then, and Grace just hoped she had benefits at that point because she thought she was going to need a therapist to get through those years.

Khalil’s reaction was going to have to wait for now. She had to pick up the kids.

She made coffee, filled a travel mug and started her errands. The first order of business? Make an ATM deposit at her bank with that insane check before she did something stupid, like dump coffee all over her purse. She started laughing as she punched in the right sequence of numbers and watched the machine suck in her deposit envelope. Yeah, that was probably going to mean a phone call from some startled bank employee tomorrow.

Then she drove south to the nearest superstore and spent the last of her cash on a small, inflatable, rainbow-colored kiddie pool, bright plastic waterproof toys, a red bucket, two packages of glow-in-the-dark stars and children’s sunscreen.

When would Khalil come by? Like the love-struck fool that she was, she missed him fiercely. She wanted him more than ever, and she hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday morning, and she already needed a nap. She was exhausted, terrified and euphoric, running on caffeine and an overabundance of dumbfounded endorphins. She instinctively knew they had only begun to touch on all the sensual possibilities they could share, while she barely comprehended what they had already done. What he had done to her.

Huh. He really was the bane of her existence. She just hadn’t realized that might be a pretty spectacular thing.

As she pulled into the driveway at Katherine’s house, Chloe raced squealing out the front door, blonde hair floating around her head like dandelion fluff. Laughing, Grace stepped out of the car. Chloe beamed and threw her arms around Grace’s middle. “Max missed you so much!”

“Did he?” Grace hoisted the little girl onto her hip and hugged her tight. “How about you?”

“I was a big girl.” Chloe put her head on Grace’s shoulder. “I was fine. But overnight is an awfully long time.”

“It is, isn’t it? I wasn’t a very big girl. I missed you like crazy.” Grace kissed her cheek. “I bought you presents.”

Chloe’s head popped up. She looked electrified. “What is it?!”

“You get to see when we go home.” Grace set her on her feet. Katherine’s children Joey and Rachel had run outside too. When Chloe shrieked and skipped in circles, they joined her. Grace went to talk with Katherine and collect Max and their overnight bag.

Katherine met her at the front door with Max on one hip. When the baby saw Grace, he squealed and tried to fling himself forward. Laughing, Katherine handed him over. “They were great, as always. Chloe struggled a bit last night and cried to come home, but other than that I think she had a good time. How did yesterday go?”

The babbling part of her brain almost got control of her mouth, but as Grace received a slobbery baby kiss, she managed to wrestle the internal babbler into silence. She was not up to dropping bombshells that would kick off a three-hour visit of explanations. That could come at a later time. For now she said simply, “Very productive. We got a lot done.”

Katherine told her, “Well, you look good but exhausted. Everything all right?”

Grace smiled. She couldn’t believe the older woman didn’t hear the whistling fireworks rocketing through her head. “Everything’s great. I’ll call you in a couple of days. We should set up a time when I can take Joey and Rachel, so that you and John can get away for the weekend.”

Katherine’s pleasant face lit up. “That would be awesome!”

“Why don’t you talk it over with him and figure out some possible dates then let me know what you come up with?”

“Absolutely!”

By the time Grace got the kids home, she had reached a crisis of hunger that mere coffee couldn’t stave off any longer. She needed a hot meal, but the leftovers from the Russian Tea Room were gone, and all they had in the freezer were Tater Tots, packages of peas, broccoli and corn, and concentrated juice.

Meanwhile Chloe was in a frenzy over the presents. Grace looked wryly into Chloe’s agonized face and said to herself, yep, I walked right into that one, didn’t I?

Life narrowed and became one foot in front of the other again, one step at a time. Her higher thought processes took a hike. Even the babbler fell silent. She blew up the inflatable pool until she was dizzy, put it in the backyard in the corner near a shady tree, and yanked the old leaky hose over to add water to it. Not much. Enough for them to splash and have fun, but a small enough amount so that the sun could warm it quickly.

She put towels and sunscreen at one end of the table, and gave Chloe the task of ripping the packaging off the plastic water toys and stacking them in the red bucket. Chloe set to work with single-minded intensity. Grace turned her increasingly cloudy attention to lunch. A hot meal, dammit. Nothing fancy; they didn’t have anything fancy in the house. Simple comfort food.

What did they have to work with? She started grabbing things out of the cupboard. Egg noodles. Mushroom soup. Tuna. Great, a tuna casserole. Quick to throw together, easy to bake, and maybe she could sneak some peas past the food Nazi in Chloe’s head. That girl, that girl.

Chloe sang under her breath. Max scuttled around on the kitchen floor, dragging his love object/baby blanket along with him. Grace blanched noodles, threw everything together in a bowl, splashed some milk into it.

All her thoughts bled together in a jumbled mishmash.

Khalil’s hands. His mouth, working her with such gentle urgency. His presence, everywhere.

What was she forgetting?

Gram, swimming beside her in the dark sea. You’re almost out of tuna.

Was that actually what Gram had said? Tuna? Or time?

Gram really would have liked the kitchen ghosts, but they were loud today and restless. Chloe was loud too and getting louder, her singing escalating up the music scale.

Phaedra, screaming. That fragile, rare connection.

Grace filled the casserole dish. Set the mixing bowl in the sink, and filled it with water to wash later. Forgetting something. Oh, duh. She hadn’t turned on the oven yet. Good thing the air-conditioners were on. Otherwise the old oven would heat the house up terribly.

She had left her body when Khalil made love to her. Not figuratively. She really had left her body.

That was unusual.

You left your body once tonight, the goddess had said in her dream. You can do it again if you want to badly enough.

She needed to remember that. It might have meaning.

Forgetting. Dammit, the oven. Food would help to clear her head. Then she would take the kids out to play in the pool. She turned the oven on and pulled out a chair to sit down with a sense of relief. Soon the next step would be to eat something. That one was easy.

Don’t stay in the house when you bake the casserole.

Grace smiled as she remembered seeing Gram, even if it had been just a dream.

Actually, the house did get pretty hot when the oven was on, even with the air-conditioning working. She looked into Chloe’s agonized face. She would never get the little girl to eat, unless they went outside first.

She asked, “Do you want to play in the pool while lunch cooks?”

“Yes!” Chloe screamed. She hit a perfect high C, which was like a needle going into the brain. She grabbed the bucket’s handle and raced out the back door.

Grace and Max looked at each other. “Come on, you too, little man,” she told him. She scooped him up, grabbed the towels and the sunscreen, and went outside too. She stripped Chloe down to her panties, left Max in diaper and diaper cover, liberally sprayed both of them with sunscreen and then sprayed herself. The kids went into the pool with the toys, while she eased down onto a towel.

She could actually relax for ten minutes or so while the oven preheated. Yowzer.

Max’s wonder and Chloe’s delight were a joy to watch. Grace let her mind fill with clouds as she watched them play in the pool. She caught herself up with a jerk as she almost fell asleep. Ugh, dammit, not when the baby was in the water. He was only sitting in a couple of inches, but still.

Time to put the casserole in the oven. But not without the baby.

She stood first and pulled him out of the pool. Max, who was normally so placid and easygoing and an all-around cool guy, stiffened in outrage and yelled. “Whoa,” she said. “It’ll only be for a minute, buddy.”

Unfortunately he didn’t have the language to understand, but he did have object permanence, and he had developed some mad love for that little pool. He kicked and screamed. The sound scraped against her already abused eardrums. She said loudly to Chloe, “We’ll be right back.”

Chloe nodded without looking up. Grace walked toward the house while she tried to control Max’s chunky, protesting body. She couldn’t even hear herself think, let alone figure out why all the ghosts of the old women rushed at her, their indistinct, transparent forms loud with distress—

You’re going the wrong way.

Which was ridiculous. That was from her dream. She was only going to the kitchen.

The wrong way.

Confused, she stopped, looking down at Max’s reddened little face while she tried to sort through the clouds of hungry tiredness in her head.

Wrong.

An enormous, invisible fist punched her. She lost her hold on Max and slammed into the ground. The back of the house disappeared in a rolling ball of flame that blew out an inferno of boiling heat. She thought there was sound too, a gigantic roar, but maybe that was all inside her head.

Max.

Oh gods, she had dropped the baby.

With an immense effort she rolled onto her stomach, looking for him. He lay on his stomach too and pushed himself up on stiffened arms. He looked utterly panicked, his mouth wide open and his face purpled as he screamed.

She came up on all fours and lunged for him. Burning pain flared in her knee. She snatched him close and ran her hands down his arms and legs then clenched him tightly, twisting to put her back between him and the ferocious blaze.

Chloe. Grace looked for her. The swimming pool was thirty feet or so farther away from the house. Chloe sat frozen in the water, clutching her bucket. She stared at the fire, her face contorted. Grace couldn’t hear anything aside from the gigantic roar, but she could clearly read the little girl’s lips.

“I need my mommy! I need my mommy!”

Grace fumbled. There had to be a connection somewhere in her ringing head. She swept out with her mind, did a wide, blind scoop, and yanked with all of her strength.

That was when the earthquake hit Louisville.